Wild Hunt (8 page)

He stepped in front of me. “Uh-uh. Hear me out. For precedent’s sake, if nothing else—I handled the first one, you know? That’s precedent, and I did a
good job, there’s no one can say I didn’t. I got buyers all over the goddamn planet just for a job like this. Ten in Japan alone who’d sell all four islands just for the scraps from the table. You
need
me, Hound.”

He was sweating—we were both sweating, it was a hot day and even the breeze from the channel couldn’t cut the impending heaviness of the air. But his grin was harder now, his teeth parted as if he were panting through them, and I suspected that his sweat had nothing to do with the temperature. And then there was the way he kept tipping his head back as he talked. It felt like an artificial gesture, one without a point, and yet there was something familiar about it. Something that I ought to know, instinctually if nothing else, even if I’d never seen it before.

“You need me,” he repeated. “I’m the goddamn best in the business.”

I took a deep breath, focusing on the scent of dying marine creatures to keep from getting nauseated. “If you’re the best,” I replied, “how come you’re doing the hard sell? The best shouldn’t need to boast. I think one of us is desperate here, and it isn’t me.”

Janssen’s face fell. “I have contacts,” he mumbled.

“I don’t
want
your contacts. And that’s another thing. The best would have done some goddamn research first.” I kicked my bike free and steered it past him. “The Fiana is done,” I said over my shoulder. “Finished. Ended. Their leaders are dead and their power is broken. I didn’t go through all that just to set myself up in their place.”

I’d said it as much for my own benefit as for his, so I don’t know what kind of response I’d expected. Whatever it was, I didn’t get it. Janssen gaped at me a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. I turned to stare at him. “I get it,” he said. “I see—oh, I just got here too early! Jumping the gun again, I guess.”

“What are you talking about?” Had we even been having the same conversation?

“You’re so
cute
!” He reached out to pat me on the cheek. I jerked away, and he grinned. “You sound so dramatic, real Academy Award stuff. Or at least a Tony. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard the same speech from some noble kid, all holy and righteous, and then six months later I’m working for him, same as I always was. San Francisco, Mumbai, Lisbon, it’s all the same. It’s like you kids get a crack at the script for the naive hero part before you move on to the grown-up way of looking at things. Especially…” He lowered his chin, looking down his nose at me, and his eyes went hooded and dark. “Especially you occult types, with your loci and your
geisa
and your silly little restrictions.”

I stepped back, but there wasn’t anywhere to go—just the channel behind me and the bridge before me. Even his scent had changed: suddenly, even though we were outside with open air on three sides of us, I had the sense of space closing in, heavy cave walls and the smell of carrion.

“Of course I know about it,” he said, almost growling now, if a sound that gravelly could be considered animal rather than mineral. “Just because I stay on the surface doesn’t mean I’m ignorant about what’s underneath.” He grinned, showing all of his teeth. In the light under the bridge, they seemed yellower than they had up top, yellower and longer. “Even the words you use—good Lord, ‘their power is broken’? Power doesn’t break, little girl, it just changes hands. If not your hands, then someone else’s.”

I made an inarticulate noise, and Janssen straightened up, stepping away from me. The heavy, claustrophobic air began to clear. “You know, I know someone who thinks the same way you do. Thinks if he ignores something he doesn’t like, it’ll go away. Doesn’t work that way. You can ignore the facts all you like, but they’ll still be there. They’ll still get into your blood.”

“I don’t need your services,” I said, trying not to snarl.

“Oh, I know. And you mean it too. You probably don’t even know anything about what’s going on under the pretty little savior-of-the-city façade you’ve got up. Community watch? Don’t make me laugh.” He bowed, a mocking, archaic gesture. “And I’ll let you be—and in six, eight months, I’ll stop by here again. And then you’ll need me, because while I may not be the best, I sure as hell am the most humane in the business. I’ll be a goddamned relief.”

He clasped his hands and smiled at me over them. “You’ve got my number.”

“Get out of my city,” I growled, and only a second later realized what I’d said.

Janssen laughed. “See you in the spring.”

T
he phone number Abigail had left connected to a Newton hotel on the Charles, out at the furthest extent of my range as a courier. She hadn’t ventured far inside the Hub. I kicked gravel out of the way as I walked my bike back up to street level, phone crammed up against my ear.

She finally picked up just as it was about to go back to the front desk. “Hello?”

“Miss Huston?” I shifted the phone so I could speak into it. “This is Genevieve Scelan.”

“Genevieve.” She said the name slowly, as if it were a password. “Of course. What is it?”

I took a deep breath, still trying to convince myself that I couldn’t get out of this. “I’ve thought about it, and I’ll take care of that preliminary matter we were discussing.”

There. Done. Everyone has things they can’t walk away from, obligations they take on simply because that’s how they see themselves and it’s easier to change the world than change that image. The geisa we lay on ourselves, a woman of my acquaintance had said, and even if my status as Hound meant that no external bindings could hold me, the ones I put on myself stuck. And even if I couldn’t protect a whole goddamned city—as the break-in at the Three Cranes had shown
in no uncertain terms—I could at least keep someone else from putting herself at risk. “I’ll go tonight,” I added before cowardice could stop me.

She was silent a moment. “I do wish you’d told me before now.”

Damn
. “You haven’t gone and—you didn’t go yourself, did you?”

“Oh, no,” she replied, and I sighed. “Not at all. But you took so long I made some other—well. It doesn’t matter now, and they’re easily remedied. Thank you.”

I didn’t like the sound of that “other,” but I wasn’t going to argue just now, not if she was safe. “Is there anything I ought to ask your—ask about besides the stolen property?”

The phone creaked, and it took me a moment to recognize the sound of someone sitting down on a creaky hotel bed. “I don’t believe so. Just where to find the original owner. And what was stolen, of course. If you know that, you should be able to track the rest down.”

I nodded. Damn right I could. “You think she’ll know?” Would there even be enough left of the ghost to answer?

Abigail chuckled, a dry sound like twigs crackling underfoot. “If she’s there, she’ll know. Tonight, you said? That’ll work well for me. You will be careful, right?”

“I will.” I couldn’t help smiling. Adept or no, she had the social cues that most adepts lost in the haze of loci and magic. There aren’t many sane ones out there, and of those, even fewer who are pleasant to be around for any length of time.

Another reason why I was doing this for her. It wasn’t much—even compared with Sarah’s frail community watch, it didn’t have much of an effect. But it was something. And it was one in the eye to Janssen’s perception of me.

The buses out to Mount Auburn Cemetery are the weird electric kind, the ones that stagger and jerk in
their courses slightly more than your basic MBTA diesel beast. My head bounced gently against the window as the driver veered around another pothole, and I tried not to think about what I’d agreed to do. Ahead of me, a young mother held her child up to the window to watch as we passed a bend of the Charles River. The kid made sounds of infant glee; the two commuters across from her looked much less impressed.

I got off at the stop closest to the cemetery itself, glanced back at the gates, and decided to give it another half hour. The park rangers or whatever you called people who took care of cemeteries had probably made a sweep right after closing, but I didn’t want to risk running into them. Instead I found a little tree-lined avenue and settled onto a bench, grateful for the chance to rest. It seemed as if I’d been in motion for the better part of three days now—hell, three months if you wanted to look at it that way.

My phone trilled: the one damn noise that would bring me out of just about anything. I spent a moment trying to remember where I’d put it when I changed out of my courier gear, then finally fished it out of the paper bag I’d brought. The number was one I recognized, and I gazed at it a moment, a heavy uncertainty tightening my throat. At last, just before it swapped over to voice mail, I picked up. “Hi, Nate.”

“Evie, I—ah, damn.”

“Nice to hear from you too. What’s up?”

He muttered another curse under his breath. “Well, I originally wanted to invite you to another Sox game, but I just got an e-mail from the guy who had tickets. He’s not selling.”

I shook my head, both disappointed and relieved. A Sox game would have been great…and with Nate…but right now, I wasn’t so sure whether that was a good idea. Simpler just to forego another chance to go out with him; simpler to push everything down. “Bastard.”

“Yeah. Hell.” Nate took a deep breath. “So. How
are you?” he said, the good mood as fake as a purple Christmas tree.

I smiled. “Working.” A brown-and-white dog, one of those herding ones that probably have pedigrees but just look like patchwork animals to me, wandered over, tail waving. I leaned down and scratched its ears; it grinned and flopped down next to me as if it belonged there.

“I’ll call back.”

“It’s okay. I have to wait for another half hour or so anyway.” When was moonrise? It didn’t matter in magical terms, but I didn’t like the idea of blundering around a cemetery in the dark. “So how’s things?”

“Not as good as when I thought I had Sox tickets.”

“Hey. I’ll take whatever I can get.” Which was true, and kind of sad. “Sorry. It’s been kind of a long week.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Funny how this silence was better than the silence yesterday, how it wasn’t the lack of things being said but rather the consideration of things to say. Not that it kept me from remembering some of the inconvenient sensations of the time. “Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know.” In theory, I didn’t have to pussyfoot around this with Nate; he’d seen the worst of it and the worst of me at the same time. But there were too many other topics to avoid. I sighed. “You remember the Fiana?” The dog sighed too and stretched out, exposing its belly in hope of a scratching. I reached down and obliged. “I’m wondering if it was the right thing to do. To take them down.”

Nate whistled. “It must have been a bad week, if you’re wondering that.”

“Yeah, well.” I sketched out a broad outline of what had happened, mixed with Janssen’s assessment of the situation and the break-in at the Three Cranes. It ended up getting a lot more garbled than I’d meant, and I kept waiting for Nate to interrupt me, tell me that I was making too much out of it, tell me that I was being an idiot.

But he waited until I ran out of steam, and when I finally came to the end of it (“and all this shit was right under my nose, Nate, right under my goddamn nose and what good is my nose if I’m not noticing anything?”), he didn’t immediately speak. For a moment I wondered if he’d hung up on me.

“You’re worried that by fixing one thing, you broke something else,” he said at last.

“Broadly. Yes.”

“It still needed fixing. And, frankly, I’m glad that you did fix it, because Katie and I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

Yes. There was that. “So am I,” I said. The dog pawed at my hand, and I resumed rubbing its tummy. At least that much was simple.

“You’re okay with talking about all this over the phone? I mean, the first time I ever talked about this stuff seriously with you, you made me turn on every tap in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, and my landlord hasn’t let me forget about that. Apparently the water bill skyrocketed that month.” I’d wanted running water at the time, anything that might dull any magic around us. But then I’d had reason to believe we were being watched, and even if I didn’t quite trust Abigail, I didn’t think she’d be scrying me. Mostly because that took a huge amount of power and tended to be about as reliable as a junior meteorologist. “I’m all right here, Nate. And I trust you.” The words were out before I knew it, and I hastened to cover them up. “I mean, you’d find some way to let me know if some crazed adept were listening in on your end.”

A teenage girl came out of a house down the street and began calling for Calico. The dog immediately rolled over and bounced to its feet, then trotted to the curb and waited, grinning, for the girl to come to it. “I’d like to think so,” Nate said. “You want to work out a code just in case?”

“Ha. That could get ridiculous very quickly.”

“What, more than it already is?”

I smiled. God, I could imagine him sitting and talking, could almost see him…why was it so much easier to talk to him like this on the phone, without the distraction of his physical presence?

“Evie? You still there?”

“Yeah.”
Rein in your imagination, girl
. “Yeah, I’m here. Thanks.”

“I think you’re doing the right thing. I mean, I don’t know how much one person can do in this…this undercurrent, but what you’ve done should be considered enough.”

“Enough
smacks of slacking, my mom used to say.”

“Remind me to tell you sometime about the Aunts. They had the same approach, and my mom hated it.”

“Tell me sometime, then.” I got to my feet, then rechecked the contents of my bag. Salt, water, resin…and Mount Auburn looked quiet, even for a cemetery. “Well, wish me luck.”

“Luck? Evie, what are you planning?”

Could I tell him?
Oh, nothing, just planning to contact the dead in a ritual that’s less risky for me than for anyone who’s got relatives in the cemetery but is still fairly risky.
No, probably not. “Nothing you ought to worry about.”

“Dammit, Evie—”

“Look, I’ll tell you about it. I will. But not now. Let me keep my composure for now, okay? I’ll find you later and tell you. It’s what I do, right?”

Nate hesitated, and I took the opportunity to say goodbye and click the phone off before I could change my mind.

I walked up toward the main gates of the cemetery. Because of some Egyptian fad at the time of their construction, they’d been built to resemble the sandstone pillars that warded the halls of dead kings—although the resemblance was about as strong as mine was to Queen Elizabeth. Still, it unnerved me to see a sun disk carved into gray marble when I looked up at the
entrance. Had they known how much history, how much of the undercurrent, they were invoking here, and whether it would follow them? Or had it just been part of the fad, like the pseudo-academic theories that had left their marks on the crazier members of the undercurrent?

It didn’t matter, I told myself. I dug a disk of carved bone the size of my palm out of the bottom of my bag, touched it to my forehead, and slid it into my bra. The faint puff of fireworks scent from it made me grimace. Aversion wards weren’t pleasant things, even linked to an item rather than free-floating, but they were useful. I’d gotten this one from a Russian émigré who’d needed information in a hurry, and I’d only used it once before now.

The main gates had been closed and padlocked, but the padlock had been designed to be more ornamental than useful. I hitched my bag over one shoulder, glanced down the street, and scrambled over the low iron gate.

The beam of a flashlight passed over where I’d been, but the aversion ward had taken hold, and for a little while at least it’d help me elude a casual glance. I wasn’t entirely happy about the skin contact needed for it to work—you try keeping something the size and texture of a sand dollar in your bra for an hour and tell me it’s no big deal—but right now I needed it.

The cemetery wasn’t as dark as I’d expected; even without a cloud cover, the haze over the city reflected some of the sodium glow. My eyes adjusted after a moment, so long as I didn’t look back at the street. Still, I kept glancing over my shoulder as I made my way along the paved paths, one too many horror movies coming back to haunt me. Whoever had decided that this place needed more trees had obviously given no consideration to the needs of nocturnal visitors; every other flutter of a leaf had my heart thumping.

In theory, I could do the ritual anywhere in the cemetery; all I needed was space to draw a circle and
patience to wait in it. But I didn’t have the mental barriers that most mediums used to keep ghosts from latching on to them, nor did I have any particular skill at this. I sure as hell was going to take all the precautions Sarah recommended.

If a ghost was of a mind to move—and most of the ones outside graveyards weren’t; they were attached to that place by the effusion of emotion that left their imprint to begin with—it would catch on to a person through one of several ways. Shed blood was the easiest. Blood was one of those all-purpose things in the undercurrent; just as a magician could work sympathetic magic on a victim using her blood, so could a ghost get the identity of a medium. And then there were the magical implications of heredity and its different blood link, the way it made some actions easier and therefore more dangerous…I didn’t understand all of them, and didn’t care to.

I touched the side of my bag, then flexed my leg, feeling the bandages over the afternoon’s scrape tighten. I was probably all right on that score, at least.

But there were other ways for a ghost to catch hold of a person. Names, obviously, since so many magicians worked power into their names. Shadows, less important now at night. And, for some reason, footprints. Failing the obvious safety of being surrounded by running water, a site off the ground offering even minimal topological discontinuity would be enough to break the trail. (
Amateurs
, I thought with a mental sniff.) So I could do the ritual on top of one of these mausoleums…

The horror-movie images came back with a rush, and I shuddered. No.

If I remembered right, there was a tower somewhere in the cemetery. I looked up, trying to get my bearings, and there it was, a shadow on the highest hill. It’d do. I started hiking.

Trees creaked in the breeze up here, and the winding trails led me wrong twice. They’d obviously been
designed for meditation and reflection, not summoning the dead…I smiled at the thought, then choked as something white and flapping loomed out from behind the next tree. It didn’t move as I approached, and I realized a second later that it was a statue, shrouded against the weather for restoration. Fine. Fine. Tell that to the way my heart was racing.